UI (User Interface), UX (User Experience), and CX (Customer Experience) are terms often used interchangeably with different meanings. Still, they complement each other and work together to create great customer service and experience.
Additionally, each aspect of customer experience is built into the tools and features offered in contact center software and other CX tools.
UI and UX play an essential part in the customer onboarding journey and the overall lifecycle of a customer for any product, mobile application, or service.
UI is about appearance, UX is about the experience, and aesthetically pleasing UI with a powerful UX results in a successful CX.
In simpler terms, let’s use an analogy of a car, UI is how the car looks, UX is how the car performs, and CX is the overall customer experience of a vehicle that includes its looks and performance combined.
In today’s world of digital commerce, everybody wants a quick and easy experience, whether it’s surfing the web, using a mobile app, playing a game, or just shopping online.
According to Forrester, customers will pay 4.5 times more if the customer experience is good.
User experience is important. A good CX software directly impacts the customer's lifetime value with the business.
What is User Interface (UI)?
UI is the first point of interaction between a user and a brand, so it should be included in your overall customer experience (CX) strategy. It covers the visual aspect of a product, and the UI design process involves improving the visual presentation, including typography, fonts, images, and other visual elements.
A UI designer works with design research, branding, design systems, and brand positioning to enhance the look and catch the user's attention. Responsiveness, interactivity, and prototyping also come under the domain of UI design.
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What is User Experience (UX)?
UX is more about optimizing the product to user satisfaction to enhance their digital experience. Improving usability, accessibility, ease, and enjoyability are the main goals of the UX. It focuses on the elements responsible for smooth user interaction with the product. Speed optimization is one example of enhancing the UX.
According to Dzone, users won't wait more than three seconds for an app to open, and they will discard 80 percent of their apps after single use due to an inadequate UX.
A good UX design starts with a strategic plan that perfectly aligns with the business goals. A UX designer tries to build of problem-solving model based on the user data and incorporate the solutions in the architecture and the wireframing. It also involves testing the prototype with the users and analyzing that data to improve the product.
A good UX design is undoubtedly an important quality of customer service, measured by the usability testing and the functionality of your product, app, or website, the final aim is to make it as user-friendly as possible.
Some of the metrics used to measure the UX are:
- Success rate: The percentage of users that complete a specific task or goal that you want them to complete.
- Error rate: Number of times a user mistakes to complete a specific task in an app or website.
- Abandonment rate: The percentage of users who give up completing a task.
What is Customer Experience (CX)?
Creating unique customer experiences (CX) is essential to the health and longevity of your company. CX combines the UI and the UX, a more holistic experience that covers the customer's journey with a brand. A better CX helps a brand gain and retain the customer, which increases the customer's brand loyalty by manifolds.
According to research by American Express, 60 percent of customers will tell friends and family about a brand they're loyal to.
And that is just one example of customer experience and its impact on your company's profits. Customer experience professionals are responsible for aligning a brand's business goals with the customers' needs and wants. They also ensure that the users enjoy a seamless and positive customer experience digitally or in person.
Key metrics to evaluate the CX are the Churn rate and Customer lifetime value.
- Churn rate: The churn rate is the number of users leaving your product or service over time.
- Customer lifetime value is the total amount the customer spends throughout the business relationship with your product or service.
A better customer experience leads to a lower churn rate and higher customer lifetime value.
What is the Difference Between CX and UX?
UI is important and a part of UX, which is essential and a part of CX. UX and CX are similar yet different. While UI works towards the enhancement of customer satisfaction with a product or service
CX focuses on brand-level satisfaction covering the entire customer journey. CX is a broader concept focusing on multiple channels for a brand selling online and in-store.
What is CX Service Design?
CX service design is a process that involves the designing and implementation of the interactions throughout the customer’s entire journey. It is arguably the most important part of customer satisfaction. It also takes into consideration behind the scene activities to enable a specific customer experience.
According to Experincelab, a service design is a fully holistic approach that is customer-centric and focused on enhancing the end-user experience.
Service design aims to maximize customer satisfaction through every journey level. CX and Service design overlap, but the only difference is that the Service design goes beyond adding all the stakeholders affecting a customer experience directly or indirectly.
For example, a service design might also consider offline factors for a purely online business. Service design is like a blueprint that incorporates all the elements throughout the customer journey. It goes beyond the UX and considers values, philosophies, behaviors, motivations, people, infrastructure, and all other material and nonmaterial components to ensure the best customer experience.
UI, UX, and CX are different, but they complement each other towards a successful product. A good UI/UX design increases customer satisfaction resulting in business growth. It also helps you better understand and serve your customer and increases brand loyalty.
Businesses that provide a better UI, UX, and CX using the customer-centric approach always enjoy a competitive edge in the market.
